These words belong to the man who threw his shoe at Bush

reply to post by Wormwood Squirm

The secret service had every right to shoot him in the face.

No they didn't, and thank God they didn't!!

If the incident happened in the states he probably would have been. In the context of the controlled space, and being in somebody else's country, with different customs, they acted with appropriate reserve.

Too bad that reserve was lost when the PTB over there decided to torture him after the fact. WTH did that prove???

The man has a message that would not have been heard had he been shot. I for one am glad to hear what he has to say.

Originally posted by patmac
I think that we should all start throwing our shoes at certain "elected" officials. This will be a non-violent and active protest against our government, meanwhile, the middle east region of the world would be smitten that we are adopting this practice.

No, thats assult...aggrivated assult will get ya 15 years in the pokey, but it might be a stretch to get it to aggro.

How about this...instead of tossing shoes, you run for office yourself and be a honest politician?

Politicians are just people like you and me whom ran for office for one reason or another...and no matter what side the politician is on, the other side is going to call him corrupt, evil, liar, etc etc etc....one you start throwing shoes, it will be neverending no matter who is in office.

I admire him and his courage. He did what a lot of us wanted to do.

I don,t understand ,the man,s shoe,s never hit bush, so where is the crime? he attempted to hit him ,yep, no worse than playing football, i thought he was the top man, the defender of the usa, a jet fighter pilot , with tough training.maybe it was an insult? priorities seem to have flown out of the window. 1000,s of people got killed with bombs, families destroyed over losing members, but we have to set an example to these animals who throw shoes, so this don,t happen again.

Yeah right, what a crock of manure.

We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shiite would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would celebrate with the Christian the birthday of Christ, may peace be upon him. And despite the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than 10 years, for more than a decade.

Anyone who buys this load of manure is looking to grow propaganda lies.

Here is the reality of Hussein controlled Iraq.

www.time.com...

He saw something he liked, recalls his former aide Adib Shabaan, who helped arrange the party. Uday tightened the focus on a pretty 14-year-old girl in a bright yellow dress sitting with her father, a former provincial governor, her mother and her younger brother and sister.

Uday's bodyguards picked up the signal and walked through the darkened room, flicking cigarette lighters as they approached the girl's table. Uday, then 33, flipped on his too, confirming they had identified the right one. When the girl left the table for the powder room, Uday's bodyguards approached her with a choice, says Shabaan, who was Uday's business manager.

When she demurred again, the bodyguards pursued Uday's backup plan. They maneuvered the girl in the direction of the parking lot, picked her up and carried her to the backseat of Uday's car, covering her mouth to muffle her screams.

After three days the girl was returned to her home, with a new dress, a new watch and a large sum of cash.

And then the younger son of Hussein.

Saddam gave Qusay broad authority to oversee the crushing of the uprising. He did not entirely delegate the task. An eyewitness recalls watching Qusay, dressed in gray trousers and a blue jacket, arrive in Suera, where armed guards herded 300 Shi'ite detainees onto a field. The President's son, dangling a pistol in his right hand, walked up to the men and shot four of them in the head, according to a military officer at the scene. As he pulled the trigger, Qusay screamed out, "Bad people! Dirty criminals!" Qusay then ordered the execution of the remaining prisoners, got into his car and drove back to Baghdad. It was just one of many Shi'ite exterminations that Qusay ordered or personally performed in 1991, the ex-officer told TIME. The same source, one of Qusay's security commanders, said Qusay, for example, directed the execution of 15 families in Saddam City, a Shi'ite enclave in Baghdad.

Oh yeah, everything was peachy in Iraq before the invasion. Just knowing that someone like Uday no long walks the surface of this planet makes the invasion worth while. Telling lies like this means that this shoe throwing guy was probably a hench man himself with plenty of blood on his hands.

Originally posted by nunya13
*sigh*

I'm finally getting a worthy amount of flags on a thread (so far) but only one poster wants to reply/add to the thread (not that I am minimalizing the one poster who has posted THANK YOU)?

I guess I'm beating a dead horse, but I thought it was interesting to see exactly what this man had to say. It was so much more than just throwing his shoes or losing control of his composure like so many of us do.

His act really had meaning to it.

This is off topic but MUST be said....

I HATE it when someone complains about a lack of responses a thread receives. Especially when that complaint comes under ONE HOUR of the original post. Seriously it makes you look like a fool. What did you expect? Did you expect 12 pages of replies in under an hour? Do you expect every member of ATS to be sitting in front of their computer with baited breathe waiting for the next thread to pop up?

This is a very good thread and deserves to be flagged and should be read... Give people time to read it. If they feel like they have something to contribute, people will reply in their own time.

Too bad he missed. I always thought his response and action were appropriate. Great for comic relief, but really not funny. What's funny is how much my views and opinions have changed over the past 20 years or so. People don't start wars, governments do. Too bad he missed.

[edit on 19-9-2009 by IGottaBeMe]

Originally posted by nunya13
reply to post by Aaron_Justin

 

I agree with everything you said about Obama. It still amazes me that the anti-war protesters are now all but completely silent just because a "liberal" is in office. Suddenly the deaths of innocent victims is a-okay to them as long as it's perpetrated by one of their (my) own.

I think a lot of us that voted for Obama because he said he would end the war are feeling a little duped that he hasn't stopped it? And now more troops are going in and in and in. I feel lied to! welcome to endless war, and welcome to the new boss same as the old boss.

Originally posted by Wormwood Squirm

Originally posted by Aaron_Justin
This guy was brave enough to stand up for his country. I may get some flack for this, but I think its admirable what he did. I can't imagine what it would feel like if some country came into America under false pretences and occupied our land. I do not pretend for a moment to understand the fear of living in a neighborhood that is turned into a war zone. If he was really tortured, and I have little doubt that he was, then hopefully he will find some peace after the ordeals he has suffered.

Some people feel that under Obama things like torture and war would slip into the past. I am of the opinion that he will only follow the same foreign policy that America has used for quite some time now. The same that Bush used.

You know I was going to give you a star for your post until I saw the second paragraph

Obama had nothing to do with this incident whatsoever. And he HAS so ordered the elimination of torture methods. So leave him out of it.

I think the Iraqi shoe tosser is a lunatic. It is admirable to stand up for your country but you are beyond nuts if you think you can slam a sitting US President in the face with a blood soiled shoe.

He is lucky to be alive. The secret service had every right to shoot him in the face.

edit spelling mistake

[edit on 18-9-2009 by Wormwood Squirm]

Imagine the relief I felt when I remembered that I did not write that post in hopes of receiving stars for it. True Obama had nothing to do with this incident, but where in my post did I state that he did?

I was implying the fact that Obama went against his campaign promise to immediately pull troops out of Iraq. The fact that he conveniently left out the tidbit during his speaches about building up the war effort in Afghanistan. Obama seems to have picked up where Bush left off with chasing Iran.

By trying to police the world and spread western ideaology, this is what happens. You get shoes thrown at you or worse.

I never said this guy was a hero. I did say I admired his bravery. I wanted to throw my shoe at Bush when he passed the Patriot Act.

reply to post by poet1b


I could not agree more with Poet1b's post...Where was this guy when Sadaam and his henchmen (and son's) were going around raping the people living in Southern Iraq? Where was this guy when Sadaam gassed all of his opposition in the North?

I'll be the first to say that Bush has done a lot of stuff that is "at least" questionable. And I agree that throwing a shoe, even at a president, when looking at the overall situation isn't something that should bring on torture, if in fact this did happen as he said.

But in no way is this idiot a hero!

reply to post by poet1b


I realize there were lots of bad things going on before we got there on many levels. The only source of information that I have for life there is the news stories I have read and seen. I have no way to know what life was like for the common citizen in Iraq, only what the reporters tell us. How do I know that they did not have an agenda in what they were reporting. Or maybe they embelished something to make it a better story. Perhaps they left out some very humane and good things to ensure that the story invokes a particular feeling. In the end it is up to each of us to try and make an educated guess.

When I saw the war criminal Bush, I wanted to show my resentment - after six years of occupation, this killer came to my country smiling and bragging about victory- Muntadar al-Zaidi

I believe what this Iraqi person did was absolutely great. The reason for this is Bush led this war on Iraq under "pretence" and "lie" to fulfill his own goal (relating to Israel backing/ Sr. Bush/ Oil/ Foreign Contracts/ enabling his and Dick Cheney related companies to make profit on contracts and tenders).

You cannot condemn this man "speculating" what if he threw shoe on Saddam. Saddam didn't turned Iraq into the living hell that it is today. The less moderate average condition in Iraq were due to Israel backed US urged sanctions. The war on Iraq had a majorly Israeli rhetoric behind the scene which Collin Powell supported as early as Dec 2000 when Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell expected to use the Iraqi nuclear threat as a means to convince Europe to back the proposed National Missile Defense. The groundwork for Iraq war was laid long before 9/11.

There was ABSOLUTELY NO REASON to attack Iraq. Bush deserved that shoe on his face and much more and I hope he never forgets that Iraqi man who threw shoe on his face till his last breath.

These were the words of that Iraqi reporter Zaidi when he was throwing the shoe on Bush

As he threw the shoes, Zaidi shouted: "This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog.

2nd Shoe
"This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."

and this was Bush response:

"It was amusing - I've seen a lot of weird things during my presidency, and this may rank up there as one of the weirdest," he said.

Originally posted by calstorm
I never heard about him being tortured for it. can anyone verify it?

Here are few links about the torture

*Iraq shoe-thrower in Greece for medical treatment

*BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iraq shoe thrower 'was tortured'

*BBC NEWS | Middle East | Shoe thrower 'beaten in custody'

*Iraqi shoe thrower released; says he was tortured - Yahoo! News

*Iraqi shoe thrower alleges prison abuse

[edit on 19-9-2009 by December_Rain]

[edit on 19-9-2009 by December_Rain]

[edit on 19-9-2009 by December_Rain]

I found the shoe throwing humorous but pointless. For that man I'd imagine it helped his standing with the group he wanted to impress for whatever his reasons. I saw it as an interesting news tidbit but of little importance as far as the impact it had on anything.

His words in his defense however ring very hollow. Iraq was only a wonderful place for those in Sadam's good graces. The way he presents it he must have been one of Sadam's in crowd.

LINK

Since the Saddam Hussein regime was overthrown in May, 270 mass graves have been reported. By mid-January, 2004, the number of confirmed sites climbed to fifty-three. Some graves hold a few dozen bodies—their arms lashed together and the bullet holes in the backs of skulls testimony to their execution. Other graves go on for hundreds of meters, densely packed with thousands of bodies.

"We've already discovered just so far the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves,"

Wiki Article

* The 1983 attack against Kurdish citizens belonging to the Barzani tribe, 8,000 of whom were rounded up by the regime in northern Iraq and executed in deserts at great distances from their homes.
* The 1988 Anfal campaign, during which as many as 182,000 people disappeared. Most of the men were separated from their families and were executed in deserts in the west and southwest of Iraq. The remains of some of their wives and children have also been found in mass graves.
* Chemical attacks against Kurdish villages from 1986 to 1988, including the Halabja attack, when the Iraqi Air Force dropped sarin, VX and tabun chemical agents on the civilian population, killing 5,000 people immediately and causing long-term medical problems, related deaths, and birth defects among the progeny of thousands more.
* The 1991 massacre of Iraqi Shia Muslims after the Shia uprising at the end of the Gulf war, in which tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians in such regions as Basra and Al-Hillah were killed.
* A massacre of Kurds in 1991, which targeted civilians and soldiers who fought for autonomy in northern Iraq after the Gulf war, also resulted in mass graves.

BBC on Kurds.

UN experts confirmed in 1986 that Iraq had contravened the Geneva Convention by using chemical weapons against Iran...

...In 1988 Iraq turned its chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds...

...Estimates of the number of civilians killed range from 3,200 to 5,000

From Mideast News 1998

The regime of Saddam Hussein is tightening his grip on the country and defusing the possibility of a military coup by purging the army and executing officers who question orders, according to Source in south Iraq.
On Friday and Saturday, while the United States and Britain air strike was on the way, the Regime executed several officers, many of them are Shia

I could go on for hours with examples of the brutality against innocent civilians in Iraq prior to our intervention including the occupation of a Sovereign Nation Kuwait where I could cite many more atrocities.

Now look at this part of the quote in the OP -

We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shiite would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would celebrate with the Christian

I can't but wonder if he was thinking of their sharing of Mustard Gas with the Kurds when he made that statement? What Sadams Sons did, was that sharing? The bullets inside the hundreds of thousands of bodies in Southern Iraq were shared I guess if you want to take it literally?

Now if his life was that free and that wonderful that he could say what he says, he would have to have been a Sadam insider and probably a participant in the sharing?

Like I said I got a laugh when the shoe was thrown but then so did Bush. I'm not a Bush supporter but I also have never seen incivility as a positive thing, but rather the actions of small minds incapable of expressing themselves in other ways.

My point? Be careful how you pick your heroes. The quoted statement starts with a lie which pretty well eliminates any credibility in anything else he had to say.

I came to truly dislike and distrust Bush but I'm not going to rewrite history or resort to lies and bad behavior to make my point. This man is after notoriety and wants attention. Throwing a shoe and then rewriting the pre-war history to explain why does not a hero make. It did probably make him popular at parties and a cool guy.

reply to post by December_Rain


What do you mean "Sadaam didn't turn the country into a living hell?" If you ignore the damage he did to the country in the years of his rule you are ignorant in the true sense of the word.

It always blows me away to hear people say how "we" meaning the west collectively have tore down Iraq...I was there...I spent 6 months going throughout Iraq, and I took the time to ask every Iraqi I could what they thought of the U.S. and the war. The vast majority of Iraqis I talked to were glad we were there. I personally escorted equipment into power plants that had been broken down since before the war and "we" the coalition were rebuilding them to bring power back to the Iraqi people...So don't give me this BS about us destroying the country! I was there, ITS NOT TRUE. If anything yell about us pouring money into a country to rebuild it...We gave Iraq their chance at freedom. Freedom to live without the thought of the government coming after them for disagreeing with them, freedom from roaming gangs of Iraqi military raping women..."WE" are giving them a chance!

This guy that threw the shoe is as potentially a propaganda plant as any of the other stuff you see in the MSM...


[edit on 19-9-2009 by PhoenixDemon]

reply to post by Blaine91555

and

Originally posted by PhoenixDemon
reply to post by December_Rain

 

What do you mean "Sadaam didn't turn the country into a living hell?"

Oh, no I do not ignore the damage at all. Infact I do see it in great detail.

Lancet surveys of Iraq War casualties
The first survey[1] published on 29 October 2004, estimated 98,000 excess Iraqi deaths (with a range of 8,000 to 194,000, using a 95% confidence interval (CI)) from the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq to that time, or about 50% higher than the death rate prior to the invasion.The authors described this as a conservative estimate, because it excluded the extreme statistical outlier data from Falluja. If the Falluja cluster were included, the mortality estimate would increase to 150% over pre-invasion rates (95% CI: 1.6 to 4.2).

The second survey[2][3][4] published on 11 October 2006, estimated 654,965 excess deaths related to the war, or 2.5% of the population, through the end of June 2006. The new study applied similar methods and involved surveys between May 20 and July 10, 2006.[4] More households were surveyed, allowing for a 95% confidence interval of 392,979 to 942,636 excess Iraqi deaths. 601,027 deaths (range of 426,369 to 793,663 using a 95% confidence interval) were due to violence. 31% of those were attributed to the Coalition, 24% to others, and 46% unknown. The causes of violent deaths were gunshot (56%), car bomb (13%), other explosion/ordnance (14%), air strike (13%), accident (2%), and unknown (2%).

Source: en.wikipedia.org...

The number of violent deaths derived from the household survey, plus the adjustments for missing clusters and reporting bias, was estimated to be 151,000 (95% uncertainty range, 104,000 to 223,000) from March 2003 through June 2006.

Source: Iraq Family Health Survey

On Friday, 14 September 2007, ORB (Opinion Research Business), an independent polling agency located in London, published estimates of the total war casualties in Iraq since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.[1] At over 1.2 million deaths (1,220,580), this estimate is the highest number published so far. From the poll margin of error of +/-2.5% ORB calculated a range of 733,158 to 1,446,063 deaths. The ORB estimate was performed by a random survey of 1,720 adults aged 18+, out of which 1,499 responded, in fifteen of the eighteen governorates within Iraq, between August 12 and August 19, 2007.[2][3] In comparison, the 2006 Lancet survey suggested almost half this number (654,965 deaths) through the end of June 2006. The Lancet authors calculated a range of 392,979 to 942,636 deaths.

and

"The NEJM article found a doubling of mortality after the invasion, we found a 2.4-fold increase. Thus, we roughly agree on the number of excess deaths. The big difference is that we found almost all the increase from violence, they found one-third of the increase from violence."
"They roughly found a steady rate of violence from 2003 - 2006. Baghdad morgue data, Najaf burial data, and our data all show a dramatic increase over 2005 and 2006. ..."

January 2008 update: 1,033,000 deaths
Opinion Research Business published an update to the survey on 28 January 2008, based on additional work carried out in rural areas of Iraq. Some 600 additional interviews were undertaken and as a result of this the death estimate was revised to 1,033,000 with a given range of 946,000 to 1,120,000.[4]

Source: anuary 2008 - Update on Iraqi Casualty Data

contd..

March 2003 to March 2005 report. - Iraq_Body_Count_project
The report says the US and its allies were responsible for the largest share (37%) of the 24,865 deaths. The remaining deaths were attributed to anti-occupation forces (9%), crime (36%), and unknown agents (11%).

Who did the killing?

* 37%. US-led forces killed 37% of civilian victims.
* 9%. Anti-occupation forces/insurgents killed 9% of civilian victims.
* 36%. Post-invasion criminal violence accounted for 36% of all deaths.
* 11%. Unknown agents (11%).

Killings by anti-occupation forces, crime and unknown agents have shown a steady rise over the entire period.

Who was killed?

* 24,865 civilians were reported killed in the first two years.
* Men accounted for over 80% of all civilian deaths.
* Baghdad alone recorded almost half of all deaths.

When did they die?

* 30% of civilian deaths occurred during the invasion phase before 1 May 2003.
* Post-invasion, the number of civilians killed was almost twice as high in year two (11,351) as in year one (6,215).

Source: Iraqi Body Count Poject

The 105-page report by Congress' investigative arm offers a bleak assessment of Iraq after 14 months of U.S. military occupation. Among its findings:

-In 13 of Iraq's 18 provinces, electricity was available fewer hours per day on average last month than before the war. Nearly 20 million of Iraq's 26 million people live in those provinces.

-Only $13.7 billion of the $58 billion pledged and allocated worldwide to rebuild Iraq has been spent, with another $10 billion about to be spent. The biggest chunk of that money has been used to run Iraq's ministry operations.

-The country's court system is more clogged than before the war, and judges are frequent targets of assassination attempts.

-The new Iraqi civil defense, police and overall security units are suffering from mass desertions, are poorly trained and ill-equipped.

-The number of what the now-disbanded Coalition Provisional Authority called significant insurgent attacks skyrocketed from 411 in February to 1,169 in May.

Iraq is Worse Off Than Before the War Began, GAO Reports

and no surprises

The study confirms that:
"Violent deaths were widespread, reported in 15 of 33 clusters, and were mainly attributed to coalition forces. Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children."

"Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq,"

Study: 100,000 Excess Civilian Iraqi Deaths Since War
VERY BAD FOR IRAQI CIVILIANS
AP Report
Doctors' survey of families estimates Iraqi wartime deaths at 100,000

Source:Centre for Research on Globalisation

Trust me you dont want to go that lane and factually compare Iraq before and after war coz' it is beyond human mind to absorb soo many deaths.

I'm mobile right now so I'm a bit handicapped to research the numbers...however, I would urge caution of citing "wikipedia" as a source...and if its so easy to believe that most of the MSM is lying or misleading the masses...why would you put so much faith in the numbers from the sources you've mentioned? I'm telling you I was there in person...I currently have many friends in Iraq, and I'm telling you the info is skewed, source...ME...sorry I can't do more to verify my outrageous claims of the coalition actually helping the Iraqi people. Believe what you want...I know WHAT I'VE SEEN...


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

And for the guy who was showing the use of chemcal weapon by Saddam, it's great to see US the "liberator" of Iraq is no less.

U.S. Used Chemical Weapons In Iraq

Veteran admits: Bodies melted away before us.

Shocking revelation RAI News 24.

White phosphorous used on the civilian populace: This is how the US "took" Fallujah. New napalm formula also used.

Source:www.informationclearinghouse.info...

The U.S. government has now admitted its troops used white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon against Iraqis during the assault on Fallujah a year ago. Chemical weapons experts say such attacks are in violation of international law banning the use of chemical weapons.

Source: www.democracynow.org...

War Without Rules, Posted November 15, 2005
Yes, the US has used chemical weapons

Source: www.monbiot.com...

and
* US criticised for use of phosphorous in Fallujah raids

* US forces 'used chemical weapons' during assault on city of Fallujah

*US Lied to
Britain Over Use of Napalm in Iraq War

*US admits it used napalm bombs in Iraq

oh and this one steals the trophy

Now we know napalm and phosphorus bombs have been dropped on Iraqis, why have the hawks failed to speak out?

The US used chemical weapons in Iraq - and then lied about it

So before you go all self righteous about "helping" Iraqi people from Saddam by using Chemical Weapons on them, think again.

[edit on 19-9-2009 by December_Rain]

[edit on 19-9-2009 by December_Rain]

Originally posted by PhoenixDemon
I'm mobile right now so I'm a bit handicapped to research the numbers...however, I would urge caution of citing "wikipedia" as a source...and if its so easy to believe that most of the MSM is lying or misleading the masses...

 

Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

 

Only the first link is thru Wikipedia after that all links to their respected website and reports can be acessed thru the References. GOA and Centre for Global Research links are not even thru Wiki. Funny thing is someone up there used a Wiki link to backup his claims about Saddam.

[edit on 19-9-2009 by December_Rain]

reply to post by Aaron_Justin


Last summer I met a young vet that had worked directly with Patreaus, and was nearby when Uday was taken down. He made it clear that Uday was the monster he was made out to be. Most Iraqis want U.S. soldiers there, and appreciate their presence. The Kurds especially appreciate U.S. military presence.